I’m not a scientist and DNA is pretty scientific, so there is no way I’m an expert in this area, and any errors in this piece are mine. But as a family historian and lay-person I have done a couple of...

Many years ago, my uncle told me about a distant relative who had drowned in Sydney Harbour and he asked me to find out more. At that point I didn’t know about any family in Australia or how I would f...

Every Waitangi weekend, Māori and Pakehā come together at the popular Lake Rotoiti Wooden and Classic Boat Parade.

Every Waitangi weekend, Māori and Pakehā come together at the popular Lake Rotoiti Wooden and Classic Boat Parade.

Written in the Waves is excited to announce that we are launching our first volume, Sailing! We are inviting graduate and undergraduate students (min. 4th year), as well as early scholars, to explore ...

Welcome to the second instalment of our series on “Health at Sea in the Age of Sail.” This time, we are talking about sanitation at sea. If you have always wanted to know how those sailors of old executed some of the most basic of human bodily functions, this article is for you! At 5 P.M. it blew rather fresh, but so steady that the Top Gallant sails were not taken in. The Purser went into the weather round House about this time, which is fixed in the Galley, on the Ships Bows. While he was on the Seat, a mass of wind was forced by a wave up the Galley of the round House. That its violence breaking against the naked Posterior of the Purser, it so lacerated his parts & Aunus, that he was oblidged to get medical assistance, as a quantity of wind had forced a passage into his Belly. (Aaron Thomas on HMS Lapwing, 1798) For much of the Age of Sail, sailors found that going about their routine daily business, including their use of shipboard toilet facilities (if available), was all but straightforward—sometimes uncomfortable or even downright dangerous. By the end of the eighteenth century, British Royal Navy frigates usually featured lavatories in the form of two “round houses” on the forward gun deck, one on either side of the bow. Half-cylindrical screens set against the ship’s railing provided some shelter and privacy. However, on most vessels, doing one’s business was a very public affair for anyone but the senior officers. Until the end of the fifteenth century, sailors relieved themselves over the side of their ship. Waste might also be collected in buckets, which would eventually be emptied overboard. That practice was rather unhygienic, however. Like the officers’ private chamber pots, buckets were generally not emptied until they were full to the brim, and even then, at best they were cleaned with just a splash of seawater. By the sixteenth century, it had become routine to use the bow as a makeshift lavatory—always downwind, causing the least inconvenience to anyone else on board. From the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, many ships featured richly adorned “beakheads”—platforms forward of the bow facilitating access to the spritsails. Such beakheads were open to splashing waves and lined with grates. Doing one’s business in those “heads” soon became common practice; the beakheads were, hence, also known as “gallstones.” Refuse would fall directly through the grates into the water, thus avoiding soiling the ship’s hull unnecessarily. References to a ship’s bow as the “(boat) head” date back to Anglo-Saxon times (early Middle Ages)—“heafod” in Old English, meaning “top of the body”—possibly in reference to the ship’s figurehead at the bowsprit. Early nautical use of the word can be traced to at least 1485. Its first use in relation to a toilet function comes from A Cruising Voyage Round the World (1708) by Woodes Rogers (1679?–1732), English privateer and Governor of the Bahamas: “He begg’d to go into the Head to ease himself.” In 1748, the Scottish author Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) similarly wrote in The Adventures of Roderick Random, “The madman … took an opportunity, while the centinel [sic] attended him at the head, to leap over-board.” Originally, the beakheads were simply lined with rails (or stays—stretched lines supporting the rigging) to sit on or lean against, often precariously, particularly in adverse weather conditions. By the eighteenth century, beakheads had fallen out of fashion and the toilet facilities had evolved into “seats of ease” near the bowsprit, containing one or more holes for waste disposal. Constant breaking-wave action would naturally clean the ship’s hull. Depending on the size and type of vessel, the heads were either plank seats or rectangular wooden boxes with one or more holes, colloquially known as “spice boxes.” Such heads were common on most ships between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, almost without modification. As their number was usually limited, one’s business was frequently done under the gaze of a queue of onlookers. Cleaning the heads was an unpleasant task. On Royal Navy vessels in Elizabethan times (sixteenth century), a sailor designated as the “liar” was responsible for keeping the heads clean: He that is first taken with a lie upon a Monday morning is proclaimed at the main mast with a general cry, “A liar, a liar, a liar;” and for that week he is under the swabber [responsible for in-board cleaning], and meddles not with making clean the ship within board, but without. As toilet paper had not yet been invented, sailors generally cleaned themselves using a communal “tow rag”—usually a hemp woven rag known as “tow”, even today—or, sometimes, a brush attached to the end of a long rope extending from the heads into the water below. After use, the rag was dropped back into the water, to be washed either by the ship’s motion under sail or by wave action and currents while at anchor. Instead of a rag, the end of the rope could also be frayed, serving the same purpose. A sheep’s tail nailed to a stick dipped into a bucket of water may have served as alternative toilet-paper substitute, as did shakings—loose strands of oakum (tarred hemp) or other fibers worked out of the running rigging—saved by sailors for use when the need arose, or even rags or clothes soaked in vinegar, for use by all. These unhygienic practices offered a perfect opportunity for infectious diseases to spread. Dysentery, typhoid, typhus, cholera, and intestinal worm infections consequently flourished during the Age of Sail. Sailors did not like to use the heads, particularly at night, in heavy seas, or during storms when there was a real danger of being washed away by large breaking waves. Instead, they often used buckets (or, sometimes, chamber pots) or hid in dark spaces, for instance on the gun deck or in the bilges, to do their business. As a result, the atmosphere below the main deck soon became noxious, attracting vermin while in port, which in turn carried disease. Most […]

Many years ago, my uncle told me about a distant relative who had drowned in Sydney Harbour and he asked me to find out more. At that point I didn’t know about any family in Australia or how I would f...

Women and the Sea Workshop April 29th to May 1st St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada Subject Fields: History, Sociology, Anthropology, Folklore, Archaeology, Social Sciences, Humanities, Maritime Studies, History of Sexuality, Coastal Studies, Gender Studies, etc Please reply by January 31st, 2026 Call For Applications Since Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling’s 1996 edited collection, Iron Men and Wooden Women, maritime history has expanded immensely, embracing not just gender but coastal histories, riverine and riparian connections, inland seas and bathyscaphe depths, animal agency, prehistorical oceans and nautical futurisms. But what, in the meantime, has happened to to the women? In many ways the challenges issued by Creighton and Norling’s volume – the shore’s vitality to shaping seafaring, women’s active and important roles in maritime enterprise, and the varied form and meaning of sailors’ masculinity – have been quite successfully taken up. But what has been the cumulative effect of this expanding scholarship? Women have not been neglected in considerations of gender and the maritime (see particularly the 2022 Jaarboek voor vrouwengeschiedenis, Gender at Sea, edited by Djoeke van Netten). Yet what has changed about what people in and outside the field think or understand of the maritime past? As much as scholarly efforts have expanded, the tendency remains to look for women on shore and men at sea. Men’s more prolific accounts of maritime life make masculinity the more accessible facet of gender for analysis, and as a result, works on women and other marginalized identities in maritime spaces have arguably been outpaced. Many of Jo Stanley’s 2002 critiques about the focus on exceptional women, the pirates, whaling wives, and cross-dressed cabin boys, remain relevant, particularly in popular conceptions of maritime life. Broader analyses of society, history, and culture, have little reason to move away from reiterations of homosocial heterotopias, bad luck maritime mythologies, and jolly Jack Tar stereotypes. This workshop will convene scholars focused on women and other marginalized identities in maritime spaces to consider what has been the impact and what is the future of the expansion of maritime studies, particularly those driven by gender, on both scholarly and popular conceptions of maritime life. As part of the Lloyd’s Heritage Foundation-funded SWAAN Project (Seafaring Women Aboard and Ashore Network), this discussion will be folded into a wider consideration of women’s work in modern maritime industries to produce resources for promoting recruitment, bettering retention, and encouraging training of women in careers in these spaces. The workshop will be held at the Maritime History Archive (MHA) at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Time will be spent between discussions, presentations, and opportunities for research and writing in a collegial setting, with outings and sessions organized for developing projects using the resources available at the MHA and in the city of St. John’s more broadly. The SWAAN project argues that to imagine a future significantly different from the present, we must re-approach the past with new eyes, methods, and ideas. Faculty, independent scholars, early-career and postdoctoral researchers, students, and others interested in women or marginalized identities and subjects in maritime history across spectra and periods are invited to apply. Please send a 500 word abstract to swaanproject@gmail.com with the subject line: Workshop Application – [Preferred form of Address, Preferred Pronouns]. The abstract should address your research and its connections to and your interest in the workshop subject. Support in the form of accommodation can be provided to some attendees; if requesting accommodation, please include accessibility requirements. Please do not hesitate to reach out to the organizers at swaanproject@gmail.com with any questions.

Amy Walker is a historian specialising in histories of poverty, ‘ordinary people’, and heritage. She completed an Undergraduate degree at the University of Greenwich and a Masters degree at the Institute of Historical Research. She is currently working on developing her project on the history of streets demolished by the London County Council during the 1930s. As part of her MA, she created a trail on Layers of London, showing different events of her Great Grandfathers life,  https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/trails/south-east-london-from-an-ordinary-person-s-perspective-1895-1952. The topics explored in this trail relate to what she is currently researching, she regularly uses this to accompany her current project. She also regularly posts on her Instagram page, @amywalker_historian, exploring a diverse variety of historic items and topics. Thank you to Amy for this wonderful addition to our Academic Practice & Digital Humanities Series! When I first started researching my family history ten years ago, I never expected it to evolve into one of my research projects as a historian. This project developed from my curiosity of searching locations relating to my ancestors. While studying at the University of Greenwich and the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), I focused on one street in particular, ‘Queen Street, Greenwich’. Many of my family members on my maternal Grandfathers side were residents along this street, some even being born there. Unfortunately, this street and the buildings that lined it no longer exist. In the 1930s, the London County Council demolished multiple streets with problems of poverty. In their place, flats were built to accommodate the growing population. Today, there is nothing that physically exists of Queen Street, even the knowledge that it was there. With this being said, maps have been one of the most useful sources used to uncover the unknown. They have captured places, roads and buildings that have changed over time, acting as a visual record of time before now. I want to build awareness of Queen Street, recovering the forgotten history of the road itself and the people who lived there. This blog will explore seven maps that have been of great use across my research. I will be evaluating the importance of using maps in a variety of different ways and express how I will develop my own maps from my discoveries. Some of the map that will be explored include a collection of maps from the Ordnance Survey Series and Charles Booth’s Poverty Map. Useful websites and links will also be included, demonstrating the accessibility to a wide variety of maps open to the public. Queen Street Queen Street has had very little recognition from other historians, making my research slightly difficult to compile but unique at the same time. Not many sources exist that support this topic, I have had to use my own skills to develop new discoveries throughout this research journey. I began to involved Queen Street into many of my MA assignments at the IHR, using maps in most of them. When it came to using maps in my research, availability and what was being shown in the map was an important consideration. Some maps did not focus on the Greenwich area, others did not show street names and buildings in great detail. These were of less use to me when trying to locate the demolished street. Layers of London (https://www.layersoflondon.org), a historic maps website developed by the IHR, provided a variety of records for me to search as well as Digimap (https://digimap.edina.ac.uk), a subscription-based website of historical maps for higher and further educational institutions. The National Library of Scotland also hold a large number of high-resolution, zoomable maps that can accessed via their website (https://maps.nls.uk). Most of the maps shown in this blog came from this site in particular, their wide variety of pictures allowed me to explore the changes in Greenwich throughout several decades. C. and J. Greenwood’s 1828 Map and Joseph Cross’s 1833 Map C. and J. Greenwood’s 1828 map and Joseph Cross’s 1833 map are two of the oldest maps used in this project. There are, of course, many maps of Greenwich that date back further but Greenwood’s and Cross’s maps are the earliest examples that label the words ‘Queen Street’ on the location of the demolished road. Greenwood’s map was made to depict the growth of London by using Horwood’s 1799 map as a comparison. Th 1828 map is highly detailed for its age, most during this period only tend to focus on main roads and famous landmarks. Not many went to the extent of adding details of ordinary homes and street names. Joseph Cross’s 1833 map was an updated version of his 1828 map of London. Like Greenwood, Cross published a highly detailed map to express the masses of developments made across London. The 1833 version is much more defined than his previous edition, reason why I’ve chosen to focus on the 1833 one specifically. When it comes to my research, these maps were the first to show me where Queen Street was originally located. Bringing attention to the date on these maps, they have also helped me consider how old the street was. Before using maps, censuses were my main source for researching the street, taking me back to as far as 1841. Greenwood’s map took me back further, proving the road was much older than censuses could show me. As mentioned already, there are older maps of Greenwich that include the shape of the road but does not have the street labelled with its name. This creates a problem with wanting to find the age of the road. Working with the information available, the age can only be estimated at this point. Ordnance Survey Maps, 1895 and 1916 The Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency of Great Britain. It is their job to construct and maintain detailed maps of England, Wales and Scotland. Map from National Library of Scotland. Queen Street can be found to the left Trinity Hospital.Ordnance Survey maps provide the most detailed depiction of Queen Street. The sizing and proportions of […]

Famed archaeologist Robert Grenier, who led the discovery of the 16th-century Basque whaling ship the San Juan in Labrador, has died. He was 88 years old.

In early 2024, I approached an academic publisher with a proposal to compose the first modern biography of a relatively unknown—but ultimately highly influential—early nineteenth-century navigator, Samuel Ward Flinders (1782–1834). I was also fortunate in being awarded a visiting fellowship at the State Library of New South Wales. That allowed me to make sustained progress and finish my manuscript well before my publisher’s deadline. Early on during my research into Samuel’s background, I found a true gem: his Service Record. Catalogue description Name: Samuel Ward Flinders; Rank: Lieutenant; Date of Seniority: 6 March 1804. Reference: ADM 9/8/2463 Description: Name: Samuel Ward Flinders; Rank: Lieutenant; Date of Seniority: 6 March 1804 Date: 1817 Held by: The National Archives, Kew Legal status: Public Record(s) Language: English Closure status: Open Document, Open Description   Context In the late eighteenth century, the dominant sea-faring European nations continued to explore commercial shipping routes to ever more distant destinations. Yet, a reliable means of geographic position determination at sea remained elusive. Determination of one’s latitude was relatively straightforward. One simply needed to measure the height of the Sun or those of one or more bright stars at their meridian passage (the highest point in their apparent arc across the night sky), and a latitude measurement would follow easily. Determination of one’s longitude at sea was significantly more complicated. Longitude determination relies on knowing one’s local time with respect to that at a reference location—such as the Canary Islands or, later, Greenwich. Solving the “longitude problem” occupied generations of scientist–scholars and navigators. It took until the second half of the eighteenth century before John Harrison (1693–1776) had perfected his maritime timepiece to work sufficiently well, ultimately earning him about half of the British Longitude Prize of 1714. Chronometers of sufficient accuracy had become available by the time of James Cook’s (1728–1779) second and third voyages to the Pacific (1772–1775 and 1776–1779). However, one had to wind them up periodically and recalibrate them occasionally given that “clock rates” decay over time. Recalibration relied upon accurate “lunar distance” measurements. This required observations of the apparent (angular) distances on the sky between well-known bright stars (or the Sun) and the lunar limb. In turn, these had to be reconciled with tabulated values (almanacs) for those same angular distances as observed from, for instance, Greenwich. For these reasons, it was common for voyages of exploration to include competent astronomers. H.M. Ship Investigator In 1801, the “Commissioners of the (Board of) Longitude” appointed John Crosley (1762–1817) as astronomer on board H.M. Ship Investigator for its European circumnavigation of New Holland (Australia) in 1801–1803. The Investigator was commanded by Matthew Flinders (1774–1814). When Crosley fell ill on the outbound leg to the Cape of Good Hope, which eventually forced him to resign from his mission and return to England, the astronomer’s duties fell onto the commander. No suitable replacement could be found at the Cape and there was insufficient time to wait for the Board of Longitude to send a replacement. Given the demands of the commander’s role, Matthew Flinders therefore increasingly delegated the astronomer’s duties to his younger brother, Samuel. Samuel had shown some promise in conducting astronomical observations back in England, but he really grew into the role during the Investigator’s expedition. However, he is often portrayed as the “black sheep” of the Flinders family. Part of that unfortunate reputation is likely owing to a few instances when he forgot to rewind the expedition’s chronometers. That apparent negligence required extensive astronomical observations and lengthy calculations to achieve recalibration. From footnote to main character Samuel has mostly remained a secondary character, a “footnote”, in the annals of history. However, on careful consideration, his achievements clearly outweigh that subsidiary classification. Given Samuel’s relative obscurity, primary source materials were few and far between. I undertook extensive searches for any useful information, including of much of the archival materials pertaining to the early development of Australia as a British colony. A breakthrough of sorts materialised when I came across an entry in the online catalogue of the UK’s National Archives referring to Samuel’s date of seniority: the document discussed here. When I received a scan of the document, I quickly realised it was as good as gold dust. As you can see from the image provided on the left, it contains Samuel’s full service record. That helped me tremendously in establishing a firm timeline for his career—from the time he boarded H.M. Ship Reliance as an 11-year-old in September 1794 to his dismissal from command of H.M. Ship Bloodhound following his court-martial in August 1808. The book resulting from my research is in press at the time of this writing. It consolidates the widely scattered literature about Samuel’s life and achievements into the astronomer’s first modern biography. The book contains a conclusive assessment as to whether his bad reputation is warranted by the historic record. An important finding is that Samuel’s poor reputation seems unwarranted; it is likely driven by open animosity between the two branches of the Flinders family, those branching off from Matthew and Samuel. In her foreword to my book, Gillian Dooley (Flinders University, Adelaide) writes that I am “… to be congratulated for restoring Samuel Flinders to his rightful place among the scientists and officers involved in the navigation and charting of the Australian coast.”

Welcome to the first instalment of our new series on “Health at Sea in the Age of Sail”! Every month, we will post a new article discussing common or not-so-common afflictions encountered below decks on the wooden sailing ships of the day. This first instalment addresses a less well-known condition, known as erysipelas, which—although usually not fatal—was quite traumatising to the common sailor nevertheless. In the medical lexicon of the early modern world, few diseases from the Age of Sail—roughly the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century—were as immediately alarming in appearance or as poorly understood as erysipelas. Known as St. Anthony’s Fire, ignis sacer, or simply ‘the rose’, it announced itself dramatically: a sudden fever followed by a sharply demarcated, vivid red swelling of the skin, hot to the touch and often exquisitely painful. It spread across a sailor’s face, limbs, or trunk, creeping across the skin and sometimes advancing inch by inch within hours. Its fiery aspect inspired dread among patients and surgeons alike, who interpreted the disease as an external manifestation of internal corruption. In the confined, unhygienic, and injury-prone environments of wooden sailing vessels, erysipelas was both common and dangerous, capable of progressing rapidly to delirium, gangrene, or death. It afflicted sailors, soldiers, convicts, and surgeons alike, leaving a trail of morbidity—and often mortality—across the maritime empires of Europe. Early modern interpretation Although modern medicine identifies erysipelas as an acute streptococcal infection of the superficial dermis (the skin’s upper layer), early modern practitioners understood it through a far older intellectual tradition rooted in humoral imbalance, miasmatic corruption, and constitutional weakness. Hippocratic writers distinguished erysipelas from deeper inflammatory conditions by its superficial nature and sharply defined borders, noting its tendency to migrate across the body. Galen (129–216 CE) and later medieval authorities framed the disease within humoral theory, attributing it to an excess or corruption of yellow bile that ‘rose to the surface’ of the skin. By the early modern period, erysipelas was not considered a specific disease but an inflammatory eruption caused by ‘acrimony’ or corruption of the blood, often provoked by external injury or internal excess. Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) called it a febrile disorder marked by “a redness of the skin, with pain and swelling, chiefly affecting the face.” Surgeons described it as arising at the margins of wounds, where the skin became red and painful before the inflammation spread outward. In severe cases, suppuration (pus discharge), sloughing (shedding) of tissue, or progression to gangrene could follow. Crucially, erysipelas was understood as a systemic disorder, not merely a local skin complaint, a belief that profoundly shaped therapeutic practice. Medical writers distinguished erysipelas from phlegmonous inflammation, erythema (abnormal redness), and gangrene, although boundaries between these conditions remained indistinct. It might arise spontaneously, but more often it was associated with wounds, surgical incisions, ulcers, or even minor abrasions. The Age of Sail provided ideal conditions for its development. Ships were crowded, damp, and poorly ventilated; fresh water was rationed, clothing rarely washed, and wounds were all but inevitable. Even minor cuts—from ropes, spars, or splinters—could provide an entry point for infection. No relief on shore Naval hospitals and hospital ships fared little better. Overcrowding, reused dressings, and unwashed instruments facilitated postoperative erysipelas, although contemporaries explained outbreaks in terms of bad air, seasonal influence, or individual constitution. Some surgeons observed cases spreading from bed to bed, but this rarely resulted in systemic isolation. James Lind (1716–1794) observed that inflammatory diseases were common in warm climates, where heat and humidity exacerbated putrefaction. Erysipelas was frequently reported following amputations or abscess drainage, especially when instruments were reused with only cursory cleaning. Malnutrition increased vulnerability: vitamin deficiencies weakened the skin and impaired healing; chronic illness reduced resistance. Alcohol abuse, widespread among sailors, was also thought to predispose individuals to inflammatory disorders by ‘heating the blood’. Symptoms in context Erysipelas additionally carried rich cultural and religious meaning. The term St. Anthony’s Fire was shared with ergotism (a form of poisoning); the two conditions were not always clearly distinguished. Both were associated with burning pain, redness, and putrefaction, and both were sometimes interpreted as divinely inflicted. In Catholic Europe, St. Anthony the Great (251–356 CE) was invoked as protector against fiery skin diseases, while in Protestant maritime cultures the language of fire and corruption persisted. Sailors spoke of the flesh being ‘set alight’, and surgeons warned of internal heat seeking an outlet through the skin. Such metaphors were not merely rhetorical: they shaped therapeutic approaches aimed at cooling, diverting, or expelling the offending humors. Shipboard accounts describe patients developing chills, headache, and fever, followed by the rapid appearance of a bright red, swollen patch of skin. The affected area was hot, painful, and tense, with a raised edge advancing visibly over time. Facial erysipelas was particularly feared. Surgeons noted swelling of the eyelids, nose, and lips, sometimes leading to disfigurement or temporary blindness. When the scalp was involved, delirium and coma were common, suggesting that erysipelas could ‘strike inward’ and affect the brain. In severe cases, vesicles or bullae formed and ruptured, leaving the skin prone to gangrene. Septic complications—although not fully understood—were recognized through rapid deterioration, foul discharge, and death despite treatment. Shipboard treatment Treatment at sea reflected broader contemporary medical debates. The dominant approach was antiphlogistic: reducing inflammation by lowering humoral excess. Bloodletting was widely employed, particularly in otherwise healthy patients and early in the disease. Surgeons bled either from the arm or, in facial cases, locally from the temples or behind the ears. Purgatives and emetics were administered to cleanse the body, commonly using calomel, jalap, or antimony. Cooling regimens were standard: patients were kept on thin gruels, barley water, or whey and denied meat or alcohol. Internal remedies aimed at ‘cooling the blood’ included saline purgatives, antimonials, and diluting drinks. Rest was prescribed but difficult to enforce; sailors were valuable manpower, and unless severely ill, many returned to duty prematurely, risking relapse. Local treatments varied widely. Cooling poultices made from bread, milk, vinegar, or lead-based preparations (such as Goulard’s extract) […]

Alexandra Sills is an independent scholar and public ancient historian from the UK. After decades of chatting to the public about history during her museum, heritage site and tour guiding career, she was persuaded to undertake a degree in her first love, the history of ancient Greece and Rome, in her 30s. She earned a first class degree in Classical Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, before achieving a distinction for her MA in The Classical Mediterranean at the University of Leicester. The hard work paid off, and she has since appeared on multiple podcasts as an expert guest, lectured in museums across the country, featured in a documentary, published several academic papers and written a slew of articles for the general public. Proving that life actually does begin at 40, her debut book ‘Gladiators in the Greek World: How a Roman Bloodsport Took Ancient Greece by Storm will be released in the summer of 2026. In truth, I didn’t choose my research niche when I was casting around for undergrad dissertation ideas; it’s a topic I’d been pondering even before I enrolled. I’ve been fascinated by gladiators ever since seeing a full-scale re-enactment show in an amphitheatre in southern France, where, as I sat amongst thousands of cheering spectators, I suddenly understood the ancient hype. Gladiators = adrenaline, even when the fights are bloodless and choreographed. As I started reading, I couldn’t help but notice that amphitheatres pop up everywhere in the Roman empire, but they’re actually really rare in the Greek provinces in the east, despite these being typically very wealthy areas who could well afford big monuments. Did the Greeks simply hate gladiators? So, for my undergrad dissertation I undertook a survey of all evidence I could find of gladiatorial combats in the culturally Greek areas of the empire, and found that an absence of amphitheatres doesn’t actually indicate the absence of interest. Three scholars have already spoken at length about collected gladiatorial epigraphy in these provinces, as well as others collating inscriptions from individual sites, but I wondered why epigraphy should be the sole source of evidence considered. For my dissertation, I decided to add in artworks, osteoarchaeology, and one of my favourite aspects; alternate venues. The scholarship that I devoured mentions Greek theatres and stadiums, some already centuries old, being subtly altered architecturally under the Roman occupation to render them safe for hosting gladiatorial spectacles. Usually, the front row of spectators had their feet resting on the orchestra or running tracks, which isn’t a problem when actors and athletes aren’t armed to the teeth. When gladiators got involved, safety measures needed to be added in a way that wouldn’t detract from the primary use of these venues. So, we start to see post holes being drilled to erect temporary safety barriers, permanent stone walls being placed between spectators and fighters, or the raising of the front rows to lift spectators a metre or more above the arena floor to keep them safe from stray blades. The adaptations were as unobtrusive as possible, as well as being far less expensive than building a separate Roman amphitheatre. These Greek venues, which held their own, deeply embedded cultural significance, could now host a foreign cultural phenomenon safely whilst retaining their original purpose and atmosphere.  So, I didn’t discover this habit, but I noticed that whilst archaeologists were commenting on these alterations in the excavation reports of individual theatres or stadiums, nobody seemed to know how common the habit actually was. I had stumbled across a question that I could answer, and in doing so, provide some original research. I did what I often find myself doing, and built a set of spreadsheets. I’m neurodivergent, which might explain why I gravitate towards making them so frequently, but it makes spotting anomalies or patterns in a dataset an absolute breeze. I had one set of spreadsheets regarding gladiatorial epitaphs, because I figured they deserved a fresh pair of eyes and a new perspective. Then I created another set devoted to every venue I could find that gladiators once fought in. When it came time to choose my MA dissertation, I tossed a coin to choose which set to write about, planning to turn both (eventually) into academic papers. I decided to concentrate my dissertation on everything about epitaphs, simply because my chosen supervisor is an epigraphy whizz. Then, I set about logging every published literary and artistic depiction of each type of gladiator, and added their locations to a spreadsheet with a column for latitude, and a column for longitude. For this to work, I had separate spreadsheets for murmillones, secutors, retiarii et al. Once every spreadsheet was saved as a .csv file, I then loaded each into a free GIS software; I chose QGIS for desktop. I’ve not been formally trained in GIS building, so QGIS was a good choice for learning ‘on the job.’ The joy of a GIS is the ability to isolate each subset of data, and to display or hide each subset as you wish in order to view exactly what you need at any moment. Each uploaded spreadsheet thus becomes a ‘layer’ of points laid on top of a standard map of the chosen region. Different shaped or coloured icons for each theme made it a lot easier to digest the information when looking at multiple layers at once. I already knew from my spreadsheets that some types of gladiator were more popular than others, but now I could easily see regional differences and preferences. Then I mapped all epitaphs that mentioned Hades, or family members, or that depicted victory wreaths and palm fronds. All of this epigraphy had been catalogued before, but seeing the data mapped for the first time allowed me to spot new patterns, as well as illustrating how widely gladiator gravestones were distributed. The eureka moment came when I added my spreadsheet of known venues. Surely, the cities with a lot of gravestones of gladiators would be the cities with […]

This blog is based on a presentation first given by me at Christchurch City Libraries’ 2023 Family History Expo called Is Richard Nixon my ninth cousin: what I have found doing my family history. Please note I am not certain if he is my ninth cousin – FamilySearch’s Famous Relatives! feature isn’t exactly consistent. Indeed, Ronald Reagan has turned up there since the last time I looked. Anyway, let’s look at some tips which are more helpful. First a quick caveat, this will be an English and English diaspora centric (and Welsh by jurisdiction extension) presentation. However, these principles are broadly universal, and for anywhere else the FamilySearch Research Wiki is a great place to start. If you are not ready to create an online tree or investigate tree software, then free charts are super handy and can be downloaded for free from various places including the New Zealand Society of Genealogists. Of course these can fill up quickly and also depend on how neat your writing is. Don’t forget to keep a note of your sources, as I’m sure you do, being organised types. Work from the known to the unknown, as this really helps you to triangulate information. Talk to relatives too. Of course this depends on your individual family circumstances, and people still being alive when you get interested (cos I wasn’t until the last few years. Indeed, seeing a printed-out tree form, as mentioned above, inspired my interest – what would it look like if I filled one in?). Memory also helps – recognising names or addresses from youth can be helpful to confirm facts. Of course, families will have legends that cannot be substantiated. For example, Oliver Cromwell is supposed to be an ancestor of mine. From talking to relatives, I do have clues which line this might relate to, but I get stuck after a few generations going backwards and the genealogy of Cromwell doesn’t have any obvious links going forward. Some legends will stay just that. Moving on to looking at records, spelling can be heaps of fun. It evolves over time, those writing in censuses can misspell names, and transcription can go wrong (someone writing Key as Kay caused me to go on a wild goose chase) as can OCR. A big hurrah for those who correct these errors eg Voluntroves! Some online databases are good at fuzzy searching, others are very unforgiving, so be sure to try every variation you can think of. In my family the Caston name is also Castons, Chasten, Causton, Custen. And when I couldn’t find Catherine Hartwell nee Caston’s death certificate she turned up under Katherine. Beware of middle names, while these can be very helpful, they can appear and disappear quite alarmingly. Also, concerning names, there can be more people of the same name in the same area than you’d expect. Surnames could be quite localised but people in these families weren’t always that adventurous with first names. I know a great x 3 grandmother was called Martha Rope, but there were 3 Martha Ropes born in East Norfolk to two sets of parents called Robert and Amy in 1785-6, and I don’t know which are the correct pair. While it may be tempting to stick to the bigger family history databases it is well worth working between them and outside of them. Ancestry may be great for Norfolk parish records, but Find My Past is the place for the Lincolnshire equivalent. Some things that are on Ancestry under their Fold3 service for an extra subscription are available under a standard Find My Past subscription (and remember your local library may well have subscriptions to all these services). There are still unique records available from sources such as the UK National Archives, country record offices – eg Lincolnshire Archives has minute books for some parishes – local history societies and family history groups. It’s always worth looking in as many places as you can for clues and evidence. While there are many records that aren’t digitised yet or will never be, more records come online all the time. The other week I was very excited to discover lots of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire parish records had been added to Ancestry. This meant I could confirm several facts and see originals of documents I’d only ever seen transcribed. And as you learn about your family it can be useful to go back over records you’ve already looked at as you can glean extra information – like confirming that a marriage witness was a married sister etc. I always like to have a map open when I’m working on family history. It helps me work out the relationships of people to place, and whether a record makes sense in that context. Often families would stay in broadly the same area for generations, but they would also move for a variety of reasons – industrialization, poverty, colonialism. I’ve certainly enjoyed discovering the part of my family that have made their way to the US, Canada and Australia. One branch even made it to New Zealand! When it comes to choosing a digital platform or software to put your tree on there are heaps of good comparison articles out there in magazines and online. However, one of the key things to be aware of with online platforms which host public created family trees is to always do your due diligence when using them. These platforms are full of records, but it is algorithms and humans who create the connection between them. Mistakes can easily be made, so if you are taking info from another tree always check it – it could be right, but also it could be misleading. As you would do with any source assess it carefully. Lastly, DNA is not a magic bullet – warch this space for more on this. So if you are beginning your family history I hope these tips – which are by no means exhaustive or unique – give you a few pointers […]